Airplay 3

Streaming Audio
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Apple Music launched lossless audio a month or so ago. And apparently new AirPods are due to come out this year - possibly in the next month. But the current AirPod line up doesn’t support lossless or hi-res playback. So I think they will launch new AirPods with lossless/hi-res support with a new Bluetooth or similar codec that can do lossless and hi-res. And presto - you got a reason to upgrade to AirPod 3’s and justifies the investment Apple made to upgrade the Apple Music catalogue to lossless. AirPods generate over $12b/year in sales.

So the question now is do they need to upgrade Airplay to support hi-res (and 4k). Maybe— but what Apple product line is going to benefit. HomePod? Nah. Although it’s getting lossless support. Maybe Apple TV. Or maybe it’s all about Apple Spatial Audio and a future product. Though I think that Spatial is built on top of Atmos which is encoded at 48khz if I’m not mistaken.

Of course, none of this even matters. I can’t hear the difference between CD audio and Hi-Res :crazy_face:

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Bluetooth cant do lossless it doesn’t have the bandwidth and would need a whole new implementation to do so. If they want lossless they would have to use a proprietary wireless connection or use an existing one like WISA which then the sending devices would also need to support as well. As Apple have said most people can’t tell so why would they bother. I am sure there will be another Airplay at some point but 2 seems to have sacrificed quality over convenience to achieve stable multiroom .

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No idea, but they are trying to boost moving their current stock.

“Buy a Mac or iPad for university. Get AirPods”

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